Return to the cross and hear the anguished cry of Jesus as he begins to pray this psalm. The price of the outpoured Spirit was the blood and water from Jesus’ side.

Your most desperate cry of suffering is nevermore a cry alone. The Spirit of God weeps within you, groaning your prayer even before it enters your mind. Verse after verse pours out the anguish of a God who experiences your pain, giving images and names to it. The psalm recalls the pain of Job from Lent—this time prayed by the Son of God who draws your prayer to saving completion in the Holy Spirit.

In verse 21, there is a profound shift in awareness. God has in fact not forsaken David, Jesus, and you, but has answered. Waves of confidence and joy rush into the soul as immense hope returns.

Some themes in music must be exhausted, before others come.

Psalm 22

What are Bible Breaths? Learn More
Example: My groanings reaching your heart. 1

We continue to follow the Psalms in numerical order.

For all the Firestarters I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or tablet. Check the menu options at the site for more information

Each day of your life in God flows into the next, in counterpoint—the name given in music to independent melodies moving together in harmony.

Today’s litany of proverbs develops inward, personal reflections in counterpoint to yesterday’s sobering passage from Isaiah. The Sunday-to-Friday readings in the one hundred and fifty-six weeks in the three-year cycle are stitched together into themes set against each other in counterpoint. Though the Sabbath Torah readings thread their way through the year according to lunar and not solar cycles, still basic areas of the Torah are wedded to the rest of the week, making a rich variety of God’s Word against which your life itself is in counterpoint.

Each proverb is set in twofold counterpoint movements. Feel this music of the Spirit, either challenging you to change, or soothing your soul, according to your need.

Proverbs 13

What are Bible Breaths? Learn More…
Example: You fulfill my hearts desire.

Tuesdays are dedicated to the Old Testament books of history
and the Hebrew “Writings.”
In the season of Pentecost this year we read Proverbs 13 and 14 and 1 Samuel.

For all the Firestarters I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or tablet. Check the menu options at the site for more information

The Holy Spirit intervenes on behalf of the earth in an immense fullness. Still, individuals, cities, and even nations are free to resist this move of God upon them, but not without eventual consequences.

Just as Sodom and Gomorrah were symbols of absolute evil in the Second Millennium B.C. in the age of the Patriarchs, so is Babylon an image of evil in the beginning of the Seventh Century, B.C. In the Book of Revelation, John uses Babylon as a type of Rome and all the evils that ensued when the emperor made himself into a god.

Continued resistance to God demands justice. Mondays of summer this year will be sobering reminders of this. Do not be frightened. Now is the moment to receive the rush of God’s love into your heart. Say a more complete YES.

Isaiah 13

Mondays are dedicated to the reading of the Hebrew Prophets.
In the season of Pentecost this year we read Isaiah 13 – 27; Lamentations 1 and 2 on the Ninth Week.

What are “Bible Breaths”? Learn More…
Example: May arrogance be ended. v. 11

For all the Firestarters I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or tablet. Check the menu options at the site for more information.